S4E2 – Jordan Berry – Earning $3,500/month with laundromats

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Key Timecodes

• (01:00) – Show intro and background history
• (03:13) – Deeper into his background history
• (04:38) – Understanding his business model
• (08:31) – Deeper into his business numbers
• (22:49) – A bit about his educational program
• (25:13) – Understanding the geography for this model
• (27:24) – A failure example and how to deal with it
• (32:07) – A bit about his coaching program
• (34:24) – A key takeaway from the guest
• (39:50) – What is the worst advice he ever received
• (40:10) – What is the best advice he ever received
• (42:30) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Intro

Hey. This is Sean Tepper, the host of Payback Time, an approachable and transparent podcast in building businesses, increasing wealth, and achieving financial freedom. I’d like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go.

[00:00:17.900] – Sean

Would you like to learn how to create $3,500 a month in passive income? Well, my next guest did that with a laundromat. In fact, he owns multiple laundromats. And no, it’s not the most glamorous business model, but if you can find the right area, a laundromat can actually be quite lucrative. In this episode, we talk about some of the mistakes to avoid, and yeah, my guest has made a lot of them. We also talk about what to look for, how much you can expect to put down from a down payment standpoint, and what revenue you can generate. And believe it or not, $3,500 is actually on the low end of this spectrum. So if you’re looking for passive income, the laundromat might be your option. All right, let’s get into it. This is a good one. Please welcome Jordan Berry. Jordan, welcome to the show.

[00:01:02.140] – Jordan

Hey, thank you for having me. Super duper excited to be here right now.

[00:01:06.390] – Sean

Yes, indeed. Well, thanks for taking the time. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your background?

[00:01:11.740] – Jordan

Yeah. So just to give everybody the context, big picture, I’m in the laundromat space right now. And like most young children, I dreamt of growing up and owning laundromats. I’m sure many people can relate to that. No, just kidding. Yeah. So I’m married. I’ve got two kids. My son is 12. My daughter is about to turn 10, even though I forbid her from going to double digits. She is insistent that she’s going to turn 10 anyways. And I live in Southern California here. I started off my, I guess, adult life as a pastor. Actually, I was a youth pastor and a pastor for almost 15 years. And again, very natural transition, I went from being a pastor to a youth or toa laundromat owner, naturally, as things go. But actually, it’s one of those things where you just look around you’re like, How did I end up here? Where did life take me? Am I in laundromats now. It’s so weird. But yeah, I got to a point after being a pastor for a lot of time where I had young kids and my wife was staying at home. And it was just a good natural time to transition out of vocational ministry and was trying to figure out what to do with life.

[00:02:33.500] – Jordan

And the idea that I had, which I thought was genius, was we had a house here in Southern California. And I was like, well, let’s take the money we got in the bank. Let’s go buy a condo in Hawaii on the beach somewhere and rent out our house here in Southern California. And if we ever decide we want to come back to California, we can do that and rent out our condo in Hawaii, net gain condo in Hawaii. And my wife was like, we could do that or we could buy a laundromat. And so we bought a laundromat. So life has been like turns left and right. And here I am right now on your podcast talking about laundromats.

[00:03:14.150] – Sean

All right. So when did you buy your first laundromat?

[00:03:18.060] – Jordan

Yeah. So that transition happened almost a decade ago. I bought that first laundromat. And the idea behind buying it was, hey, laundromats are this business that throw off pretty good cash flow and don’t require a whole lot of time. And that was the idea. That is not, however, how it worked out for me. We can dig into that here a little bit. Let’s do it. But that was the idea behind it. Yeah.

[00:03:46.400] – Sean

So yeah, let’s back up a second here. You arrived at a laundromat. What did you read or did you talk to somebody or what turned you on to that business model?

[00:03:55.960] – Jordan

Yeah. So basically a family friend was working a tech job in San Francisco Bay Area, working 70, 80 hours a week, but making good money. And he ended up buying a laundromat and replacing his income from his tech job and working like five hours a week. And my wife heard about that and was like, that sounds pretty awesome. Let’s do that. And I was like, that does sound pretty awesome. Okay, we can do that. And then we can buy our condo in Hawaii. I don’t, spoiler alert, own a condo in Hawaii, nor have I ever up to this point yet? Still on the to-do list, I guess. Okay, maybe- Family friend introduced us to the idea of it.

[00:04:38.870] – Sean

Okay, so walk us through how did you get into this? I assume it’s similar to buying a home. You have to put a certain percentage down. Is that correct?

[00:04:47.020] – Jordan

Yeah. So we went about the business of… Well, I did mostly, we went about the business of trying to research as much as I could. Now, nine, 10 years ago, there really wasn’t a whole lot of information out there on laundromats, on how to buy them, how to run them. There wasn’t really anything online, and there aren’t really too many books on it. So I did as much research as I could. I talked to the family friend, but he happened to just buy a really good laundromat the first time around. And so he didn’t really have to learn a lot of the lessons that I was about to learn, at least the way that I learned them. And so it was helpful, but didn’t really know some of the pitfalls that were laying in front of us. But we ended up finding… Yeah, I did what pretty much we all do. And we’re getting ready to jump into something is I Googled Laudermat for sale near me, or maybe even Yahoo at the time. I’m not sure where in the timeline it was. But at one point, I was Yahoo things. I Googled Laudermat for sale near me.

[00:05:48.590] – Jordan

I was looking at Laudermat. I found one I thought was interesting, connected with the broker. The broker was like, actually, this one, it’s got some issues going on right now, but I have this other one that you might be interested in. And that one was the one that we ended up buying and we ended up paying all cash for it. It’s what we call in the business a zombie mat, which means a big time fixer-upper. So we ended up buying it, I want to say, for $60,000, 65, 70, somewhere in there, a thousand dollars. And then we financed a bunch of new equipment for 100 % financing, which is great. But for somewhere around $150,000 of equipment into that laundromat.

[00:06:31.400] – Sean

So we’re looking at 165 plus the 150, bring us what, 215?

[00:06:35.700] – Jordan

Yeah, yeah, 65-ish. Yeah, and the 150. Yeah.

[00:06:39.820] – Sean

Okay, so 215 all in. And what % down?

[00:06:45.050] – Jordan

We just bought it all cash. That one. Yeah, so 100 % down. Well, except for the equipment, 100 % down in the acquisition. And then we financed the equipment 100 % down. Got it.

[00:06:55.200] – Sean

Okay, so you had 65 in the bank and then you financed 150, I assume you went to your local bank and just opened up a business bank account?

[00:07:05.810] – Jordan

So we did do all that. So equipment financing, the manufacturers actually have financing for us. That’s how you can get a hundred % financing a lot of times through the manufacturers. So that’s the way that we went about it. But you also can get loans from the bank for that stuff, too.

[00:07:25.520] – Sean

Got you. Okay. What do you typically need to do? What is best practice with the launch pad? It sounds like you want to… I’m thinking of the 20 % rule when you’re buying a home here in the States. And the audience knows that sometimes I’ll speak to like, hey, we’ve got a US example here, but we do have a lot of listeners outside the States. So here in the States, of course, you want to put 20 % down, otherwise you have to have PMI, private mortgage insurance. But in your case, is that the similar rule, 20 % down?

[00:07:55.230] – Jordan

Listen, right now is a weird time when it comes to lending. Interest rates are higher and lenders are getting a little more conservative on the business, commercial real estate front. So what I’ve been seeing lately is closer to actually 40 % down is what lenders are looking for for a Laundromat, if you’re going to go the traditional financing route. So that’s closer to what I’m seeing. But there are also SBA options if the Laundromat can qualify for those where you have to pay put less down, for sure, down to 15 %, I think. Got you. Okay.

[00:08:31.190] – Sean

All right. And then let’s break down the numbers here. My audience loves the numbers. You were looking at this laundromat. How many machines were you looking at? Did you start with the same amount you have today, or were you able to scale up by adding more space to this laundromat? Maybe break this down a little bit.

[00:08:46.980] – Jordan

Yeah. So I mean, laundromats can be difficult to scale up in terms of number of machines, because obviously they’re very heavy on the infrastructure side. So you got to have a lot of plumbing, a lot of electrical. And if it’s not there, then you have to add that, which obviously adds some cost. But also you got to have the space to be able to do that. And then also there’s something called an impact fee, which, listen, there’s a lot of ridiculous government fees out there. But an impact fee has got to be near the top of one of the most ridiculous fees. Because basically what it is like a thumbs up like, okay, we’re going to allow you to connect to the sewer. It’s not like a permit to do that. It’s essentially just permission to do that. And those fees can get really high, and they usually charge per machine that you add. So if you’re building out a space that doesn’t have that infrastructure already, you’re going to pay for every washing machine. Or if you’re adding machines, you’re going to pay for those extra washing machines to do that. So I didn’t add, just to answer your question, I guess in a really long way, I didn’t add any machines.

[00:09:54.980] – Jordan

We just replaced existing machines. I think there were.

[00:09:58.650] – Sean

Or.

[00:09:59.050] – Jordan

Are, I think there’s 32 washers and 28 dryers at that laundromat.

[00:10:06.490] – Sean

And when you shop for a laundromat, I’m assuming you jump right to the revenue per machine to figure out, hey, what is this laundromat overall doing in comparison to another laundromat that could be, I don’t know, a mile or two away. I know you’re in LA, so population density and infrastructure density is a lot more than where I’m located is like suburbs of Milwaukee. We’re talking Piwaki, most people won’t know where that is. And it’s like you’ll have a laundromat every five miles.

[00:10:36.090] – Jordan

Right. Yeah. So generally what we’re looking at is net income overall per month in terms of evaluating the laundromat. And the reason for that is because there’s a lot of different sizes of machines and different brands use different sizes. So one brand might have 20s, 30s, 40s, 60s, 80-pound machines. Another brand might have 20s, 30s, 50s, 70s, 90s. So it’s hard to compare per machine. And obviously, they’re all going to be at different price points and different profit margins also. So really what we’re looking at is net income per month and then obviously net income per year. But that’s the general way of how we’re evaluating it. And then that net income becomes the foundation of the valuation of the laundromat also.

[00:11:28.380] – Sean

Do they do this with like, we’re talking like 3X, 4X, 5X net income?

[00:11:34.320] – Jordan

Yeah. So the industry average has been for a really long time, like three and a half to five times net income, annual net income. But lately, over the last maybe 18 months, I am definitely seeing a shift up a little bit as demand has grown and supply is pretty limited. It’s more limited than I’ve ever seen it before in the industry. And so we’re seeing more like four to five and a half times net income.

[00:11:58.080] – Sean

Got you. Okay, so that’s multiple to acquire. You find out from whoever owns it. So if there’s a broker, you find out what the net income is, multiply it by, you can expect by 4X, 5X. That’s what you’re going to pay for it.

[00:12:11.620] – Jordan

Yeah. And here’s what’s so great about Laundromat. And I just put this in a context. So I have real estate. I love real estate investing. I have residential and commercial real estate a little bit, not a huge portfolio, but a little bit. And for Laundromat, the average real estate deal can’t’t touch the average laundromat deal when it comes to cash flow. So for example, at a 4X multiple, you’re expecting a 25 % return on your money in terms of cash flow. And at 5X, you’re at 20 %. That’s what I would say is a base hit deal. That’s not a home run, that’s a base hit deal. And that’s without using leverage. So if you appropriately use a loan, that 20 % to 25 % can grow pretty quick, and the return on your investment can grow pretty quick there. And so that’s why I always when I’m talking to people who are interested in leaving your nine to five or achieving financial freedom, if those are your main goals, I actually think real estate is not the best route to go if your goal is to do that as quickly as possible. I think a business like a laundromat, doesn’t have to be a laundromat, but a business like a laundromat actually is going to get you there a lot quicker.

[00:13:24.170] – Jordan

And then you can turn around. You’ve got that cash flow that gives you that freedom to then go and invest in real estate, build that generational wealth, capture the equity that can be great in real estate. And I actually think that way is actually a quicker way to go if your goal is that financial freedom or leaving your 9-5 job.

[00:13:45.400] – Sean

Laundromat over real estate.

[00:13:47.520] – Jordan

For the cash flow, initially, yeah. But like I said, I’m a real estate investor. Probably I love real estate even more than laundromat. But in terms of cash flow, I don’t know, I got super onto the financial freedom through real estate investing. And then I started doing the math. And I’m like, if I’m at like $200 a cash flow per door, how many doors do I have to have? That’s a lot of doors. That’s intimidating. But 99 % of America could replace their income with one to three laundromats. You know what I mean? Base hit deals.

[00:14:20.860] – Sean

We’re going to break down the numbers here in a second. But I was just going that direction because here we’ll use my area, which is going to be different than where you’re at in L. A. Or even you said you’ve got a buddy up there in San Francisco. I mean, that’s as expensive as you get. But let’s say you use a $250,000 home here in the Midwest, we’ll say Milwaukee area. And just talking to other friends that have owned real estate, they’ll bring in, they’ll charge like rent. That’ll be, let’s say, $1500. But after you pay your expenses, you pay your mortgage, you pay your property management company, which is taking on average between eight and 15 %, you’re net profit on revenue. You’re making on a renter’s 1,500, you might pocket, let’s say, five to seven hundred at best. And then the question is, I got to own like multimillion dollars worth of property to replace my income, and that can take 10 years or more. You can achieve financial independence, but you got to stick to it. And you got to take that money, reinvest it back into the property that you’re making, and you’re going to keep your day job.

[00:15:28.430] – Sean

But with the laundromat, let’s break this down a little bit. So you’re all in about $215,000. What’s your revenue on that single laundromat?

[00:15:38.140] – Jordan

Well, what are you asking me here? Are you asking me what my revenue was on that laundromat or what it should have been?

[00:15:45.000] – Sean

Let’s talk about it. I like how you phrase that. Talk about what it was and what it should have been. That’d be great.

[00:15:53.400] – Jordan

Okay. So I alluded to this did not go well for us. And granted, I’m coming… My story is a story of we’ll call ignorance because it’s just hard to swallow stupidity, but it’s a fine line between ignorance and stupidity. So I made a lot of really bad mistakes. And part of the problem was there really wasn’t any information out there. And so I really didn’t know what I was doing. And a cardinal sin that I committed was I pretty much relied almost entirely on one of the two people who stood the game for me buying this deal. It was the broker. The seller and the broker stood the game for me buying the deal. I pretty much relied entirely on the broker. And it just turned out the broker did not have my best interest in mind. The broker essentially was like, hey, look, this Laundromat, we already know it’s not making money. It’s breaking even. It needs a lot of work. It’s been neglected. We’re going to put new equipment in there. Here’s the pro-forma of what it should do. And the pro-forma basically was like, hey, you should be making, I forget, like $5,000 or $6,000 a month net after a year.

[00:16:59.090] – Jordan

And I’m like, Sweet, man. I’m in for 60. So if I make five grand a month, that’s like a % turn on my investment. That’s pretty good. I’ll take that all day long. It just turned out that… And so he basically was like, We don’t really need to do any due diligence. It’s not making money. We know that. It’s breaking even. Well, it just turned out that it was losing thousands of dollars in mind. It wasn’t breaking even. But I didn’t know that until I took over. Again, lessons I learned, they cost me a lot of money. I mean, we’re talking six figures worth of lessons here by the end of this thing, but it should have maybe been obvious. I don’t know. But I was losing a thousand dollars. So then I go and take out this loan for 150-ish thousand dollars for equipment, which with the business model, the Field of Dreams business model. If you build it, they will come. Because the broker also was like, listen, nobody markets in laundromat. You don’t have to do any marketing. Let’s just fix it up. Everybody will show up. Well, I mean, they did.

[00:18:04.860] – Jordan

So business doubled. I can’t remember exact numbers, but to give you a ballpark, I think we went from like $4,000 of gross income to about $8,000 of gross income. But we already had a chunk to make up for because it was losing money every month. I want to say it costs. I’m trying to give you good ballpark numbers, but it’s been a while. Thank you. But I want to say my expenses at that initial point were like 6,500 a month. And I was maybe at 4,000 of income. And it almost doubled to close to $8,000 a month. But now I’m also tacking on a loan payment to that number. So we were under what? We went from thinking we were going to be making $5,000 a month to we were losing a couple of grand a month for a couple of years there.

[00:18:56.880] – Sean

Why were the costs so high? Let me phrase this differently. What should the cost have been and why were they at 65?

[00:19:04.720] – Jordan

I think the number is fairly reasonable. I think the rent was a little high. Rent is your lease is just paramount in Laundromat because with Laundromat, you need a long-term lease. Because if the landlord is like, hey, we’re not going to renew your lease, guess what? You’re not going to move your laundromat most likely. You’re out of business. You’ve got no asset anymore. Or if the landlord is like, hey, we’re going to double your rent because your lease is up, so your rent is doubling, well, now you’re in a tough situation because your cash flow is going to be lower, your net income is going to be lower. And then because of that, the value of your business is also going to be lower. So you’re taking a double whammy hit. So you need a long lease. But if you get into a bad lease, obviously, it’s going to affect your business. So the rent amount was probably pretty high or probably too high for what I should have signed. So I was part of it. But really, the Laundromat should have been able to do enough business to cover that. And one of the big lessons that I found, so I put all this money into rehab in the Laundromat, putting new equipment in, retooling it, all that stuff.

[00:20:07.020] – Jordan

I put zero dollars into rehab in the reputation of the Laundromat. And the Laundromat was not good. Obviously, it was in disarray to put it lightly, but also… Okay, and I want to caveat this by saying this is not a typical experience for everybody. I don’t want to scare anybody off. But the previous owner didn’t go there very often. It had become like gang turf. And so people were just literally afraid to go there. Who’s doing laundry? It’s like moms with little kids. What mom and little kid wants to go? And there’s drugs being sold and done in the back of the laundromat, people drinking, and you know what I mean? So it was just not a good situation that I was walking into. And I was just so naive. I had no idea about it. So it actually took a couple of years of just staying on top of keeping the place clean, keeping the machines running, keeping the wrong people out while still making it welcoming for the right people. And I didn’t do any marketing because so much money was going out, I turtled up. I was like, I can’t put money into marketing because I don’t know if it’s going to work.

[00:21:17.240] – Jordan

And I just can’t bear to lose even more money than I’m already losing. I just got scared. I didn’t know what to do. And I couldn’t find. I was desperately searching for somebody to help me figure out what to do. And I just couldn’t find anybody to help me figure out what to do. And so it was a hard situation. It just took time for Word to get out organically because I wasn’t doing anything to help it get out. So it took a couple of years, essentially, to hit that break even point. It’s just a long road.

[00:21:49.960] – Sean

Yeah. Let’s take a quick commercial break. Do you want free access to a ticker course of your choice? There are two ways to do this. Option one, if you use an iPhone, we’re looking for a TopStox podcast, five-star review. Simply go to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. Option two, if you don’t use an iPhone, then you obviously can’t use Apple Podcasts, which means we’re looking for a five-star review on Ticker. Simply go to the Ticker homepage. Just go to ticker. Com. Look for the trust index logo. It’s right at the top of the site. Click the logo and you can either leave a review on Trustpilot or Google. Now, in order to get free access, you need to send us a screenshot. Please take a screenshot of your review and send it to support@ticker. Com. But again, you can either leave a review on the Top Stocks Podcast or on Ticker itself. We’ll pick a new winner every week and send a coupon code so you can gain access to a course of your choice. Okay, back to the show. Because you teach people, we’ll talk about that a little bit too, as you teach people how to create their own passive income stream through a laundromat, do you set expectations with people that, hey, you can buy a laundromat in day one, you should be profitable?

[00:23:05.340] – Sean

Or do you set expectations that it’s probably going to take 3, 6, 9, 12 months?

[00:23:10.480] – Jordan

Well, it depends on the Laundromat that you buy, right? So what I found out is buying a fixer-upper Laundromat can be a great opportunity if you do it correctly because you can take a non-performing asset, turn it into a performing asset, and achieve higher returns potentially than if you just buy an already performing asset. But it’s a riskier way to go. And if I had to do it over, I would have taken my 65,000 that I bought all cash. And I probably would have used a loan, used leverage, and bought a higher caliber laundromat that was cash flowing day one. So for performing laundromat, you should be cash flowing day one. That’s pretty much what you’re buying when you’re buying a laundromat. But if you’re going to buy a fixer-upper laundromat that’s not cash flowing, then you got to go out and make it cash flow. And it’s going to take some ramp up-time essentially for that. So it depends on how you buy it.

[00:24:09.330] – Sean

Now, did I hear earlier you try to aim for about 4,000 net profit for a laundromat per month?

[00:24:17.940] – Jordan

Essentially, the broker told me that I should have been hitting 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 somewhere in there. But I mean, it really depends. And there’s laundromats that do to $5,000 a month, and there’s laundromats that are doing $20,000 to $50,000 a month. Really? So anywhere in between. Okay. And what I recommend to people is, well, especially if your goal is to leave your nine to five or achieve financial freedom, you should have an idea of what that number is that you need. So if it’s like $10,000 a month or whatever it is, whatever your number is, well, then you can back into, okay, what size laundromat do you need? If you need like 100 grand a year, then the laundromat is probably going to be somewhere between $400 and $500,000. And then you can figure out, all right, well, how much capital do I need? And what ways can I finance it? All that stuff from there.

[00:25:13.680] – Sean

Let’s talk about geography. Were you finding, based on data, the best locations for a profitable Laundromat?

[00:25:21.930] – Jordan

Yeah. So okay, to this question is the answer to every question, which is it depends. One of the things that’s interesting is there’s different business models. I have a podcast where I interview laundromat owners, and almost all of them have some nuance to their business model that’s different than everybody else. And it’s such a simple business that you wouldn’t expect that. But to put some big categories around it. So there’s the self-serve model. What do you think of when a Laundromat people come to your place and they do their laundry, they use your machines, they pay you to do the work of their laundry, which is awesome, it’s crazy. So that demographic that you’re looking at is, generally speaking, a renter demographic. It’s a demographic that’s at or below, usually below, median income there. And then obviously, larger household sizes are better. Larger household sizes generally mean there’s kids, families. And we all know kids are filthy, disgusting creatures. And so that means a lot of laundry, which is good for a loan of that owner. So larger household sizes are better. And then those are some of the demographic things that you’re looking at.

[00:26:34.130] – Jordan

But even just to shortcut that, if you’re finding things in the area that are like fast food restaurants, general, dollar tree, whatever your dollar store is, wherever you live. Similar kinds of demographics are going to use the check cashing places. If those things are in the area, it’s probably a good area for a laundromat also.

[00:26:56.810] – Sean

Sure. Those are good tips there. Yeah.

[00:26:59.490] – Jordan

One of the things I was going to say real quick is there’s also the other side of the spectrum, which is growing right now, which is the drop-off laundry. It’s more of the service side or the pickup and delivery laundry. And obviously, that demographic is going to be on the higher income scale there. And the radius can be a little bit larger than that self-serve laundry demographic.

[00:27:21.710] – Sean

Got you. Yeah, that makes sense as well. This first one is such a… There’s a horror story here. You went through the trials and tribulations and getting through those two years to get to profitability, I have to ask because I know the audience is going to ask me, what are you making now on that launch map?

[00:27:38.450] – Jordan

Yeah. Actually, I just sold that one. But that one ended up netting around, I think, when it finally got stabilized, we were around like $3,500 a month. And so it was never going to net what the broker told me it was going to net. I know that now. But that one ended up at around the $3,500 a month once it got stabilized there. But it took even longer beyond that two years to get to that point, just as it ramped. And again, it was just I could have done a lot of things to really speed that upswing up. And I didn’t know to do it. I didn’t know how to do it. I was too scared.

[00:28:15.510] – Sean

Correct me if I’m wrong here. But my approach to avoid the pain that you went through, is it to really look at, I want to see the books. I want to see that income statement, cash flow statement, balance sheet. Would that avoid the problem?

[00:28:29.570] – Jordan

Listen, you would think so. Here’s the thing about our end. So Laundromat, love them or hate them, they’re a cash business by and large still. We’re slowly here adopting relatively new technology, which is like card payment systems, stuff that’s not really new, but it’s new for our industry. So more digital payment options are coming to more Laundromats. But we’re still, by and large, a cash business. I half-joke, but I’m not really joking. Laundromat owners tend to either be really bad at keeping the books or maybe they don’t have books at all. Or on the other side of the spectrum, they’re very good at keeping the books. Like maybe they have more than one book even. You know what I mean? So the books can be helpful, but sometimes they’re just not helpful. And you’ve got to utilize other methods to verify the income and expenses.

[00:29:24.370] – Sean

What about going to like, I assume… I was going to say go to their HNR block or whatever their account in it is and ask for the tax returns. And if they’re doing their taxes themselves, well, there we go. We’ve got jumbled numbers. Yeah.

[00:29:41.060] – Jordan

I’ve just found that tax returns are not all that helpful, at least in terms of income. They can be helpful in terms of what your expenses are. Because if you’re going to lie on your tax, if you’re hiding money or you don’t know, you’re going to try to minimize your income and get every expense in there possible. So they tend to be a little more helpful on the expense side than the income side. But my best advice on if you’re trying to verify income is number one… So there’s a whole bunch of free tools that we have at laundromatresource. Com. So go download all those free tools and utilize those to help you verify income expenses. So that’s number one. Number two is, back when I bought my first Laundromat, if I could have a 15-minute conversation with myself now, I would have saved myself six figures of lessons, you know what I mean? And so I just recommend, listen, any asset class that you’re going to go into real estate or any of the real estate asset classes that you can get into laundromat, any other business, if you’re going to do it, just have somebody who’s done it before, who understands the industry that you’re trying to get into help you through that.

[00:30:55.770] – Jordan

And it’s laundromat. Obviously, listen, part of what I want to do is help people get into Laundromat if that’s what they’re trying to do the right way the first time. Because when you’re getting returns of 20-25 % plus, if you get that base hit, if you get it right the first time, sky is the limit for you. You can scale if that’s what you want to do pretty quickly. So obviously, that’s something I want to do. But I don’t even care if it’s me or anybody else. Find somebody who knows who can help you get into the business the right way or the investment the right way the first time because it would just save you so much money. Money, yes, but pain. That’s the thing for me. It was so painful for me. And there’s a stat that floats around that’s like, Laundromat’s 95 % success rate. I don’t know where that comes from, but that’s the stat that floats around. I just was like, How am I in the five % that can’t figure this out? How is this possible? Yeah. And so the pain and the money and the emotional stress, all that stuff, just save yourself all of that.

[00:31:56.190] – Jordan

And if you’re going to make an investment with tens or hundreds of thousandsof dollars. If you need to, fork over a tiny bit more just to make sure you get it right the first time. Yeah.

[00:32:07.450] – Sean

Now, you have, this is a good segue too, you have your courses. I want you to talk about that a little bit. And do you offer any coaching, like coaching service, coaching plans?

[00:32:17.500] – Jordan

Yeah. So listen, there’s a ton of free stuff. We have podcast, YouTube channel. We got a blog, a lot of my resource. You could just Google it. It’ll show up all over the place. So all that’s there. There’s a free course that you can check out on how to buy your first Laundromat. It’ll give you very high level, but it’s three lessons long. It’ll tell you how to find a laundromat, which is easier said than done right now. It’ll tell you how to value it. And then the lesson three is a high level overview of due diligence. But if you decide this is an asset class for you and you really want to dig deep into it, we have a comprehensive course that’s based off of obviously all of my painful, expensive lessons. But also I’ve interviewed now hundreds of laundromat owners for the podcast and just offline. I broker laundromat, so seeing that side of it. So it’s coming from a whole bunch of different angles. It’s a comprehensive course on how to buy your first laundromat in the next 90 days. And it also comes with all the tools and resources that you need for that.

[00:33:18.570] – Jordan

And I’ll send you a link for that if you want to throw that in the show notes or wherever you put it. So that course is there. I do consult myself, and we have a little consulting team, super experienced owners in industry professionals that also offer consulting. So you’ve got some options there if you need a little more one-on-one help too.

[00:33:37.540] – Sean

Can you break down costs real quick on the course?

[00:33:41.360] – Jordan

Yeah. The course, I believe, is $1500 or right about there for the course. And again, that’s coming with, I think it’s 40 short lessons. And it’s going to walk you through the entire process of value in the Launabank, and then also give you unlimited access to all the tools you need, which is the online calculator that will help you with the valuation, both the limited version, when you get the limited info from the seller, but then also the detailed version of that calculator once you dig in and do your due diligence and get more detailed information to get a more precise valuation. And all the other tools come with that also.

[00:34:20.850] – Sean

Got you. Okay, that’s great. All right. Before we transition to the Rapid Fire round, is there any other key takeaway you want to give our audience?

[00:34:31.360] – Jordan

The only other thing I would say is one thing that when I do consulting, and I know this comes up all over the place, you probably heard this before too, but I hear things like, Oh, I’ve been thinking about buying a laundromat for years, or, Oh, I’ve been thinking about buying a real estate investment for 10 years or whatever. And I used to be like, Well, why haven’t you done it yet? But as I reflect on how hard it was for me to get in and all the pain I went through, I have some empathy there. So if you’re in that spot and you haven’t made the leap into whatever you are thinking about doing, just know, I understand. I get where you’re coming from. And I totally empathize with you and the risks associated with investing big chunks of money into some of this stuff. However, number one, I would say I’m not dead. I went through it all. It was pretty much worst-case scenario. And I didn’t die, so you won’t die. Number two is if you hang with it, even if you find yourself in a difficult situation, you’re probably going to come out much better on the other side, not just financially.

[00:35:36.740] – Jordan

But I’d say I’m a fundamentally different person than I was when I went in because I’ve just grown so much through learning all the lessons that I learned. But number three, you can really, really cap the downside by having somebody who understands the business just walk you through that first, whatever it is. And so the main takeaway here is you will never accomplish your goals unless you actually step off the ledge and make the leap. And overcoming that first step is probably the hardest part of it all. And so all I would say is take the leap. Find somebody who’s where you want to go. Buddy up to them, pay them if you have to, or offer something else of value to them or whatever you need to do. Find somebody who’s been there and then take the leap. Cap that downside and then take the leap and do it. Because there’s all kinds of quotes. It’s like everything you want is on the other side of fear, all those motivational things. But they’re all true. You’ve got to take the step in order to get where you want to go in life. So take that step.

[00:36:45.900] – Sean

Awesome. Love the advice. All right, let’s transition to the Rapid Fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who Jordan really is.

[00:36:55.140] – Jordan

Oh-oh, right? Yeah, now I’m scared.

[00:36:57.800] – Sean

All right. If you can try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less. You’re ready? Got it. Yep. All right. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:37:05.510] – Jordan

Oh, my favorite podcast right now is maybe besides this one, of course, and mine, of course. I’ve been listening to a lot of The Game with Alex Hormozy. I’ve been a Hormozy attic lately, just loving the way he approaches things. So I’ll say The Game.

[00:37:22.700] – Sean

I know before we hit Record, we talked a lot about content. There it is. Hormozy is big on content. Connecting on that.

[00:37:28.840] – Jordan

Big on content.

[00:37:29.500] – Sean

Yeah, absolutely. Now I know why. So audience here real quick. This guy, Jordan, he was telling me about what he does for an episode. He records one episode in his podcast and it’s promoted 70 times. He breaks down all the clips. They go out to different channels. Unbelievable. From one piece of content turning 70. I was like my jaw dropped to the floor. So anyway, quick plug there. You know what you’re doing. You’re growing your podcast quickly. Appreciate that. Yeah. All right, next question here. What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:38:02.680] – Jordan

You know what? I mean, so I’m a book manager. I got books all over. You can’t see them over here. I got them everywhere. So it’s hard to pick one. But if I had to pick one that I’ve been reading recently that I really love, it would be by Benjamin Hardie and Dan Sullivan. It’s 10X is easier than 2X. And I love that book. One of my big takeaways, it was like a little bit of an aha moment for me is they’re saying, hey, if you’re looking to just level up slowly in life, whatever it is, business or whatever. If you’re just trying to level up slowly incrementally, there’s an infinite number of ways that you can do that. When you start to think about how do I go from where I’m at to 10X where I’m at, there’s really only going to be a few, if not only one way that you can do that. And so it actually gives you a lot of clarity and focus to think bigger and to set bigger goals. That was a big takeaway for me and a big shift in my perspective in what I’m doing. Going back to the content thing, in.

[00:39:00.450] – Jordan

I’m like, okay, how do I 10X the content that I’m doing and have developed some systems and tools to help me do that? And those are always evolving. So not 15 seconds, apologies, but 10X is easier than 2X.

[00:39:12.140] – Sean

They’re usually, to be honest with you, I say 15, but they’re usually always more. I love that. Another guest recently recommended that same book, and it’s been sitting in my Amazon shopping cart. All it takes is another guest be.

[00:39:26.590] – Jordan

Like -.

[00:39:26.860] – Sean

Click it. Just click, yeah. Time to order. Yeah, that’s great.

[00:39:30.520] – Jordan

Yeah.

[00:39:31.290] – Sean

All right. We got a fun one here. What is your favorite movie?

[00:39:34.390] – Jordan

Oh, man. I always go back to Gladiator. I just love Gladiator. It’s a hard one to pass out. I’m going to go to Gladiator.

[00:39:44.410] – Sean

I think a handful of people say the same movie. It is a classic, great movie. Yes, indeed. All right. A few business questions here. What is the worst advice you ever received?

[00:39:56.420] – Jordan

Probably you don’t need to do due diligence on this business.

[00:40:01.270] – Sean

I’m.

[00:40:01.710] – Jordan

Surprised. That was pretty bad advice. Seems obvious in hindsight, but lesson learned, I guess.

[00:40:09.380] – Sean

Hey, lesson learned. All right, flip the equation. What is the best advice you ever received?

[00:40:14.280] – Jordan

Yeah. And that’s a great question. I’ve received a lot of really great advice. I mean, going back to how we ended before the segment is take the steps. I guess if I had to boil it down, and I can’t think of an exact quote for it. But essentially, the action is what takes you where you want to go. I see a lot of people who get stuck. And I do this, I’m prone to this too, get stuck in that learning loop, listening to your podcast and reading books and consuming YouTube videos and learning, learning, learning, learning. And learning is great. But really, learning doesn’t get you anything. It’s the action that takes you there. At one point, that was a big shift for me, for sure, thinking about it that way.

[00:41:00.910] – Sean

I was just pushing somebody the other day. They were not on the podcast, but they were analyzing and researching and thinking and planning. And I asked them, so what actions have you taken? I’m still researching this. I’m looking at that. I’m like, how long have you been in this research mode for a year? Come on.

[00:41:18.240] – Sean

Get off the bench. Get in the game.

[00:41:20.130] – Jordan

Yeah, I had a guest on my podcast one time that was like, he’s like, I give myself three months to do research, and then I either cut bait and I decide that’s not the route to go or I go full for it. Because anything you need to get started, you can learn, I think probably even three months is long. But anything that you want to do, you can learn enough to get started in three months easy, for sure.

[00:41:45.670] – Sean

I love that. I think.

[00:41:47.220] – Jordan

That’s great.

[00:41:48.060] – Sean

Yeah, time box it for sure. All right. And last question here is a time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say? I think you just answered that question.

[00:41:59.190] – Jordan

For us. Yeah, that. Well, I mean, listen, it was so painful, that first long trip. It was so painful. I definitely go back to my old self and say, hey, look, don’t buy anything until you find somebody who can help you through it. It wouldn’t even necessarily be specific advice on that deal for myself. It would be find somebody and don’t do anything until you find somebody to help you through it, who’s been there already.

[00:42:30.160] – Sean

Awesome. All right, Jordan, well, where can the audience reach you?

[00:42:34.040] – Jordan

Yeah. So my email is Jordan, J-O-R-D-A-N@laundromatresource. Com. So you can check that out there. And laundromatresource. Com or just Google Laundromat Resource or Yahoo, if that’s still a thing, Laundromat Resource. And then obviously, I’ll send you a link. If you are getting serious about thinking about investing in Laundromat, definitely click that link. That’ll take you to the course. Again, it’ll give you everything that you need to help you get that first deal and do it the right way the first time.

[00:43:03.830] – Sean

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Jordan.

[00:43:05.440] – Jordan

This is great. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. It’s a.

[00:43:09.410] – Sean

Huge honor. Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts out there you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. And if you have a moment, please head over to Apple Podcast and leave a five-star review. The more reviews we get, especially five-star reviews, the higher this podcast will rank in Apple. So thanks for doing that. And remember, this show is for entertainment purposes only. If you heard any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please do not buy or sell those stocks based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. We’ll see you.